GOP Candidates Pursue a Unified Base With Attacks on Obama

Republican presidential hopefuls former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich (R-GA), former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain (L-R) take the stage during a photo opportunity before the start of the first New Hampshire debate of the 2012 campaign at St Anselms College in Manchester, New Hampshire June 13, 2011.

GOP presidential candidates focused their political assault on the White House rather their Republican opponents during the New Hampshire debates. Conservatives say their focus is on winning back America. Critics say it is about keeping fiscal and social conservatives united against the president.

"He (Pawlenty) recognizes that what this president has done has slowed the economy. He (Obama) didn't create the recession, but he made it worse and longer. And now we have … 20 million people out of work, stopped looking for work, or in part-time jobs that need full-time jobs," Romney responded.

Still, many of candidates' ideas on minimizing government, fixing the economy and creating jobs were similar.

Sapp said the candidates did not reveal more detailed and divergent economic plans because they are afraid it may cause a rift between fiscal conservatives and Christian conservatives who are mostly concerned with social issues such as family and marriage.

Perkins told evangelicals at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference recently that the national budget is in its current condition because the government is trying to provide entitlements to help families marred by divorce and a decline in traditional marriage. Presidential hopefuls need acknowledge the social underpinnings of the economic crisis in their campaigns, he believes.

"Real conservatives understand the interconnectedness of the social with the economic and the economic with national security," Perkins told The Christian Post via email.

Only four candidates – Bachmann, Pawlenty, Santorum and Newt Gingrich – displayed that understanding, he identified.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told evangelicals at the FFC conference not to focus on purity of conservative ideals, but rather on winning back the White House. Any GOP candidate, he emphasized, would "agree with you a lot more than they're going to agree with Barack Obama."

Perkins, on the other hand, advocates uncompromised conservatism.

He remarked in a CNN editorial, "Barbour has repeatedly said, 'Purity is the enemy of victory.' That's a nice sound bite, but it won't win you the Republican nomination or the White House. When it comes to conservative principles, compromise is the companion of losers."

Sapp, a Christian, believes the GOP candidates featured in the debate were all "jokes." Christian conservatives are in for a shock, he said, because the current presidential candidates are fiscal conservatives and are bound to compromise on their key social issues.

"The Christian right is going to start panicking when they see the things that they care about [are] not being reflected," Sapp predicted.

Perkins agreed that the Monday debate "was not conducive to social issues," but said it is still early in the election cycle for a winning conservative candidate to emerge from the pack or enter the race.

He said of the current candidates, "I'm optimistic about our options – We've got some good candidates to choose from."